A groundbreaking investigation of how illicit commerce is changing the world by transforming economies, reshaping politics, and capturing governments.In this fascinating and comprehensive examination of the underside of globalization, Moises Naím illuminates the struggle between traffickers and the hamstrung bureaucracies trying to control them. From illegal migrants to drugs to weapons to laundered money to counterfeit goods, the black market produces enormous profits that are reinvested to create new businesses, enable terrorists, and even to take over governments. Naím reveals the inner workings of these amazingly efficient international organizations and shows why it is so hard — and so necessary to contain them. Riveting and deeply informed, Illicit will change how you see the world around you.

A detailed survey of a growing scourge of the global economy—the smuggling of people, materials, and money. Smuggling used to be a family business. Today it is big business. Illicit Trafficking: A Reference Handbook offers a thorough introduction to the problems of illegal trafficking that have emerged from and been intensified by globalization. This title provides an examination of how criminal enterprises have exploited opportunities to enrich themselves and broadened their involvement in many areas of illegal trafficking while compromising or evading legal authorities. The coverage includes a brief history of illicit trafficking, analyzes current problems, and examines local and global containment policies such as Presidential Decision Directive 42. It also explores key international agreements on money laundering, bank secrecy laws, extradition treaties, and technologies that have exploited legitimate business opportunities to enrich their profits while compromising or evading legal authorities.

This report assesses the magnitude, flows and drivers of illicit trade and the illegal economy including: narcotics, human trafficking, wildlife, sports betting, counterfeit medicines, alcohol and tobacco. The negative socio-economic impacts that these markets have in consumer countries are as worrisome as the goverance gaps that are exploited in source countries. This report examines each illicit sector in terms of the geographic sources, destinations and key trade routes, the current trend of infiltration by organized crime networks, and good practices or future policy solutions with which to combat illicit trade within the various sectors.

Trafficking Culture outlines current research and thinking on the illicit market in antiquities. It moves along the global trafficking chain from ‘source’ to ‘market’, identifying the main roles and routines involved. Using original research, the authors explore the dynamics of this ‘grey’ market, where legal and illegal goods are mixed and conflated. It compares and contrasts this illicit trade with other ‘transnational criminal markets’, such as the illegal trades in wildlife and diamonds. The analytical frames of organized crime and white-collar crime, drawn from criminology, provide a fresh perspective on a problem that has tended to be seen as archaeological, rather than criminological. Bringing insights from both disciplines together, this book represents a productive discourse between experts in these two fields, working together for several years to produce the evidence base that is reported here. Innovative forms of regulation are the most productive way to explore crime control in this field, and this book provides a series of propositions about practical crime reduction measures for the future. It will be invaluable to academics working in the fields of archaeology, criminology, art history, museum studies, and heritage. The book will also be a vital resource for professionals in the field of cultural property protection and preservation.

Human Trafficking: A Comprehensive Exploration into Modern Day Slavery examines the legal, socio-cultural, historical, and political aspects of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. While most texts only cover sex trafficking and labor trafficking, this text takes a more inclusive approach, provide coverage of what is currently known about organ trafficking, child marriage, and child soldiers as well. These topics are explored within the borders of the United States as well as across the world. The reality is that this problem is not limited to one country or, even, one continent. Technology and globalization have made this an international crisis that requires a collaborative and cooperative international response. The goal of this text is to provide an accurate understanding of all forms of human trafficking and current responses to this crime.

An overview of sex trafficking, forced labor, organ trafficking, and sex tourism across twenty-four nations, providing detailed accounts of the victims' experiences and discussing anti-trafficking measures and the conflicting policies that make trafficking so pervasive.

Though mankind has traded tangible goods for millennia, recent technology has changed the fundamentals of trade, in both legitimate and illegal economies. In the past three decades, the most advanced forms of illicit trade have broken with all historical precedents and, as Dark Commerce shows, now operate as if on steroids, tied to computers and social media. In this new world of illicit commerce, which benefits states and diverse participants, trade is impersonal and anonymized, and vast profits are made in short periods with limited accountability to sellers, intermediaries, and purchasers. Louise Shelley examines how new technology, communications, and globalization fuel the exponential growth of dangerous forms of illegal trade--the markets for narcotics and child pornography online, the escalation of sex trafficking through web advertisements, and the sale of endangered species for which revenues total in the hundreds of millions of dollars. The illicit economy exacerbates many of the world's destabilizing phenomena: the perpetuation of conflicts, the proliferation of arms and weapons of mass destruction, and environmental degradation and extinction. Shelley explores illicit trade in tangible goods--drugs, human beings, arms, wildlife and timber, fish, antiquities, and ubiquitous counterfeits--and contrasts this with the damaging trade in cyberspace, where intangible commodities cost consumers and organizations billions as they lose identities, bank accounts, access to computer data, and intellectual property.